In an interview with the New York Times, Pao apologized, but said that most users don't care about what has transpired over the last two days. She further said, according to the Times, that "the most virulent detractors on the site are a vocal minority."

“I’m sorry we let our community down yesterday,” Ms. Pao said, adding, “We should have informed our community moderators about the transition and worked through it with them.”

Ms. Pao

However, she went on to say that "Redditors" do not care about the departure of Ms. Taylor nor subreddits going "dark." "Most of the community is made up of thoughtful people, and they can appreciate what we all do, even if we don’t always agree,” she explained.

Aurelius

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I believe that she is wrong...I signed up at voat today, as have many other people. Reddit was interesting and a lot of fun, but it is easily replicated and once the voat servers are up to speed it will be a more than worthy challenger

I believe they mean the style of the site. It is easily replicated and really nothing special. Just a large amount of users. Once voat and similar sites acquire more users they will be just as good, hopefully better.

Seriously. No concept of how web services work if you're going to write one off for load issues that quickly. Supporting that many users takes either time, or money. Either donate, be patient, or shut up.

the vast majority of reddit lurks, produces no content, does not help organizing, and just consumes what the "vocal minority" makes available.reddit's CEO not getting that simple truth is rather worrying

Not true. I'm an active user for 4 years and have bought gold, upload contents, upvote posts and regularly comments. I have also participate in reddit gift exchanges and even did rematch - I consider to be a very active user of reddit and I DID NOT care one bit about this whole Victoria fiasco. I know many other similar like me who do not either.

While the "the vast majority of Reddit users are uninterested in what unfolded over the past 48 hours", and "the most virulent detractors on the site are a vocal minority" may be true, she's most likely basing those percentages off of total user names, not active users.

While I agree that it seems like a large number of redditors do disagree with her, it's hard to say anything for sure without cited sources and statistics. Keep in mind that this applies to both sides of the arguement.

I'm not say what she did was right, but she's spot-on that most redditors don't care or will forget within 48 hrs. Look at reddit right now-- relatively back to normal, people posting memes about cute things they did today. Guaranteed reddit will meet their gold goal today as well, just as they did the past two days, as everyone blindly gilded half the 'down-with-reddit' posts. It was just entertainment for them and now they're tired of hearing about it and want to get back to the cute stuff.

yup. front page went from full havoc to quiet normality in a matter of hours.that's not the way reddit behaves. this kind of heavy handed regulation is totally new, and it totally stinks.i'm really sad, but i truely think it's over. we'll have to find an other ballroom.

you will need to understand another level.that the changes will remain after she goes and the replacement comes in.people will see it as a victory because she is gone.reddit sees it as a victory because the changes happen, the blame goes with pao,and people are happy with the changes now because the figurehead was replaced.redditors are getting played.

I agree pyramid, it's quite possible certain parties want pao blamed for the big brother scenario going on on reddit. Who profits from this is the question! Also, Friday was my last day on reddit and it was because I saw comments and posts being deleted in front of my eyes. Mostly comments about pao, which were deleted immediately after I viewed them. Is that how people deal with criticism now, just try to make it go away? So disturbing...

The problem is that the minority who are angry with her are the mods and active users who moderate and post to the subreddits that the rest of the majority come to gather around. Without those minority, then there's no content, and with no content, the majority goes elsewhere.

That's the problem here. Don't let this horrible excuse for a human being smooth you over with her PR bullshit.

I think she's missed one key point, it's the active users, mods and content creators who are upset and calling for her job, but there's a substantial amount of lurkers who are just consuming the content from these active users.

When the active users up sticks and move to another site, the lurkers("vast majority") will follow suit because they'll follow the content.

"Most of the community is made up of thoughtful people" - implying that the "virulent detractors" are not thoughtful people? Nice one, Ellen Pao. I've been following the events with interest. I'm not a "virulent detractor", but if you keep going this way I'm going to end up as one. I care about Reddit. I've got 8 creddits still unspent. And today, I wish I could get a refund.

Excuse me Mz Pao, but in fact I am interested in Victoria Taylor. Although I have never met her I can see that she is an individual, a real person, and a redditor. Which is more than I can say for you.

I'm probably one of the people she thinks she's referring to, and she's wrong. Victoria was the closest thing to the public face of Reddit. How anyone in power in that organization could fail to anticipate this response is mind-blowing. Even the lowest level manager understands that firing an employee Hasan impact on others; when it's the most visible employee in your organization, failure to plan for a smooth transition speaks very poorly to the basic management ability and judgment of those in power. predict the fallout on this is mind-boggling. As a manager I always prepare for

The person they let go was a very diligent and well-respected member of the community who played a vital role organizing high-profile celebrity interviews which served to bring attention and revenue to the site. For a CEO struggling to make a profit, they really couldn't have made a more idiotic move.

Mrs. Pao seems content spending her days spouting meaningless platitudes and firing cancer-stricken employees while her company rots from the top-down.

Exactly. Like commoners to a queen, Consumers to the Stock trade, Fans to Hollywood'Celebrities', Voters- to the Democratic parties. Your just a product, just a number, an income stream, just another 'follower' to them. This is the way to go, show them we're here with our own forces too. The truth always comes out. Can't hide with Social media. Its about time our people start being heard and acknowledged. They be the few, we be the many. We can be reasonable about this, reason alone is doing a great job at taking her down. Unlike Pao, by the sound of it.

I can't speak for anyone but myself, but I joined reddit a year ago, lurk mostly, post in one or two subs occasionally, and sincerely don't care about their internal HR situation, including who they hire and fire or why they do it.

I also don't care about the mods tools or any of the back end stuff. The site looks like something out of the early internet / BBS systems. If that's how it looks on the back end I wouldn't color myself surprised.

So maybe I am who she is talking about, if he data shows that there are plenty of people like me out there.

TLDR; I am a redditor and I don't really care about someone getting fired or a "revolt" in the mod ranks.

I agree with that, but I don't really spend much time reading them now. Maybe Bill Murray or Dan Ackroyd, but I'm an American so I am used to advertising being shoved down my throat every minute of every day. I think it's fair to say we have built-in BS detectors at this point.

As far as this thing goes though, I'm surprised reddit didn't just Admin takeover the revolting subs and permaban the mods. (And it's that kind of draconian thinking that makes me unsuitable for power of any kind ;) )

"but I'm an American so I am used to advertising being shoved down my throat every minute of every day"

And that's why you decide it's fine to make reddit more like buzzfeed? Why do you hate genuine expression so much? Your way of thinking is counter-productive and disgusting, you're surrendering yourself to things that are artificial, cheap and unimaginative for your own convenience. If you hate Internet so much, go watch television. There are people, unlike you, who just want to talk the same way you talk with a colleague in real life situations. Reddit is able to detect bullshit on the Internet now, but it won't be able to do so after Pao transforms it into corporate space

The beauty of the AMA is that while folks are allowed to promote things in the original post, they (should) have to answer whatever the community wants them to talk about in the comments. Its what separates a reddit interview from the sort of canned interviews we are used to seeing through other channels.

VWhen Victoria helped, she made sure that folks at least 'saw' the tougher questions. - Based on what IAMAMOD (Karmanaut) has said since they reopened, IAMA mods no longer think they can count on the Admin team to hold up that end of the bargain.

"As far as this thing goes though, I'm surprised reddit didn't just Admin takeover the revolting subs and permaban the mods. (And it's that kind of draconian thinking that makes me unsuitable for power of any kind ;) )"

1. reddit is not equipped to take over as moderators - they are a relatively small company with 50-100 employees (a minority of which are actually involved in community management)2. if reddit actually curated the subs, they would become more open to liability - this is why youtube, facebook, instagram, twitter, 4chan, and other social media have always defined themselves as 'platforms' - and generally only step in for breaches of terms of service.3. Mods are free labor: In general, Mods enforce the 'terms of service' so that reddit doesn't have to.4. Power mods: In the case of defaults - the mod teams have a huge overlap... so if reddit went in and took over IAMA because its a moneymaker - they could very likely see a revolt in askreddit - which is the biggest sub, and on and on...

My experience of Pao is that she is narcissistic and insouciant. As an active redditor, I feel as though she doesn't give a rat's patoot about the users, and that attitude is going to come around and bite her hard as many migrate to Voat and other competing services. Is there no board of directors here that can fire her ass?

"My experience of Pao is that she is narcissistic and insouciant."In other words, she's a CEO. She seems like an incompetent one by her track record but I think even though the means is terrible the ends is probably shared between her and all the stake holders. They are salivating to monetize Reddit.

None of my subscribed sub reddits were affected. I have no idea what's been happening, i don't usually look at the front page. To me it seems like she's doing things within her power and rights to do... I think she's right that most users don't give a shit, as i'm one of them.

She's technically right (the best kind of right). Most reddit users are lurkers and come to reddit for pics, videos, and entertaining content in general. They are uninterested in Victoria and reddit drama in general. They are the ones who bring Condé Nast the dough, measured in pageviews.

But! Where do those pics and videos and entertaining content come from? A small minority of redditors who create it and build the community. And among THOSE people, there is a lot of interest in how reddit treats its community builders, and Victoria in particular. They may be a small minority, but they are essential to reddit's success. Make them leave, and the content will leave with them, and the community will follow.

I didn't care much about the drama until I saw this, and now I'm a bit pissed. Her arrogant, dismissive demeanor is exactly the wrong attitude to take in a situation where a substantial portion of her user-base is up in arms. I'd encourage her board of directors to find someone more professional to run their business concerns.

I am one of the people that she could have been talking about. I am mostly a lurker and produce little to no content. However, I do notice what is going on, and I hate the censorship. I have noticed a difference since she has been CEO. I did sign the petition, also.

Ellen Pao speaks out of both her faces at the same time. On one face, she says that there new reddit hires can not negotiate pay offers , from the other face, she has an agent and attorneies negoiating her own pay.

The thing is... She's absolutely right, I 100% don't care at all about this situation, reddit, or the moderators. I'm a pretty apathetic content sponge.That fact is deadly dangerous to reddit, because the moment the content creators jump ship, I'll follow them like the fair weather fan I am, because I don't care -- at all -- where I get my content, or about which corporation or moderators are involved. If reddit compromises its content stream by having moderators jump ship, I'm out too, not because I care, but because I don't.So she's right -- most reddit users absolutely don't care a bit about this, or the site, or really anything. And that's why she can't afford to piss off the moderators, who are the people who do care.What's hilarious is that the reddit administration seems unable to see that most people not caring is precisely what makes the moderators caring so dangerous: they're wielding my caring by proxy, because they hold the keys to content.

I think the issue is that most of the people that do care are the ones who actively contribute through engagement with the site. I personally don't see voat as an alternative (because its user base grew from GG and FPH), but if reddit keeps going down the path it is currently on (one where the CEO discounts user and moderator frustrations), than eventually something better will come along to replace it.